FULL BIOGRAPHY

London-born Anna Clyne (b. March 9, 1980) is a composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music, combining resonant soundscapes with propelling textures that weave, morph, and collide in dramatic explosions. Her work, described as “dazzlingly inventive” by Time Out New York, often includes collaborations with cutting edge choreographers, visual artists, film-makers, and musicians worldwide.

Currently the Chicago Symphony’s Mead Composer-in-Residence through the 2011-12 season, Music Director Riccardo Muti lauded Clyne as “an artist who writes from the heart, who defies categorization and who reaches across all barriers and boundaries. Her compositions are meant to be played by great musicians and listened to by enthusiastic audiences no matter what their background.” Her new work Night Ferry will be premiered with the orchestra in February 2012. under Muti’s baton. Clyne has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, ETHEL, Metropolis Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Her <<rewind<<, “inspired by the image of analog video tape rapidly scrolling  backwards with fleeting moments of skipping, freezing and warping,” has been recently performed with both the BBC Symphony and BBC Concert Orchestra as well as at the Cabrillo Festival, and will be performed in November with the National Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin.

Clyne’s work has been championed by some of the world’s finest conductors, including Marin Alsop, Pablo Heras-Casado, George Manahan, Jeffrey Milarsky, Riccardo Muti, Alan Pierson, Andre de Ridder, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Osmo Vänskä, as well as by Alex Ross of The New Yorker, who curated performances of her work with the Seattle Chamber Players and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

As a passionate collaborator, Clyne has worked with many of today’s most inventive and pioneering artists that include choreographers Kitty McNamee/Hysterica Dance Company (USA), Matthew Neenan/BalletX (USA), Pascal Rekoert/Flexicurve (Holland); musician Björk (Iceland); painter, Y.J.Cho (Taiwan); artist, Josh Dorman (USA); sound artists Jody Elff (USA), Jeremy Flower (USA); film-maker Michael Bates (Australia), visual artists Joshua Bryan (UK/Japan), Luke Dubois (USA), Jon Niborg Speier, (USA), Rokhshad Nourdeh (France), Joshue Ott/Superdraw (USA) and writers Tom Bolt (USA) and Scott Jacobson of The Daily Show (USA). She is currently working on a ballet with choreographer Nicolo Fonte to be premiered with the Houston Ballet in 2012.

Her work has been performed in such diverse venues as the Barbican Centre, Chicago’s Symphony Hall, the University of Edinburgh, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and in New York’s (Le) Poisson Rouge, Museum of Modern Art, Galapagos Art Space, and Carnegie Hall. Selected as a guest composer for the 2011 Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, Clyne’s pieces have also been featured at the d.u.m.b.o. Dance Festival, New York Musical Theatre Festival, River to River Festival, Beijing Modern Festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Soundings Electronic Music Festival.

Clyne is the recipient of several prestigious awards. These include a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, eight consecutive ASCAP Plus Awards which merited her recent catalogs of work for their “unique prestige value”, a Clutterbuck Award from the University of Edinburgh, awards from Meet the Composer, The American Music Center, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Jerome Foundation, International Artist Sponsorship, and a 2006 Commission Prize from ASCAP and SEAMUS “in recognition of outstanding achievement and demonstrated ability”. She was also a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Composer Award, and was nominated for a 2010 British Composer Award.

Recent honors include participation in the American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings, Bang on a Can Marathon, Bang on a Can Summer Institute, Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, Osvaldo Golijov/Dawn Upshaw Professional Workshop at Carnegie Hall, Free Advice, a composer/choreographer event at the Joyce SoHO, nomination for the New York Van Lier Roulette Fellowship, Young Concert Artists Composer Program, and a master class with Pierre Boulez in New York City.

In addition to her love of collaboration, Clyne is also deeply committed to music education and teaching. She served as the Director of the New York Youth Symphony’s award-winning program for young composers “Making Score” from 2008 to 2010 where she also worked with Jon Deak at the New York Philharmonic’s Young Composers Program. In Chicago, she teaches composition workshops for local young composers and incarcerated youths at a nearby juvenile detention center through an initiative created by Riccardo Muti and Yo-Yo Ma.

Clyne holds a first-class Bachelor of Music degree with honors from Edinburgh University and a Master of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music where she studied with Marina Adamia and Julia Wolfe respectively.

Her music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

- August 2011

This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programs with
the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.